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A lot of Brexit politics was about immigration: how EU rules mean you cannot bar any European from entering and reading, except in extreme circumstances. And indeed, UK is much more international than many European peers. But what happened post-Brexit is that (legal) immigration numbers are at all time high. There is a high fraction of low skilled immigrants from outside EU, often with questionable English and, well, looking different - which matters to some people. My point isn't to disparage hard working people, but that it's very visible. So that's a major Brexit pledge gone completely awry. I don't think there is anything Brexit-related that made migration control objectively harder, only that the control failed. Although what also happened, not unrelated, is that high-skilled immigrants from EU largely left, because post-Brexit UK is not very attractive to Europeans. This is very perceptible especially in health care, where shortages of doctors and nurses are now quite scary. And the immigration is so high in then because UK has always had labour shortages, patched by foreigners. It's only the country of origin that changed. |